CARS - the basics

As we wrap up 2014, I want to thank you for your willingness to learn CARS and help get us ready for how invoicing and evaluations will be done in the future.

As a quick review:

• starting March 1, 2015, all invoices and evaluations will need to be done in the CARS application (no matter how big or small your firm is)
• If you have been trained in CARS (or watched the videos or read the manual), you can start using CARS
• If your WisDOT PM has not been trained, you may not be able to use CARS for invoicing or evaluations - keep in good communication with your PM
• If you create an invoice, please email the PM to let them know when you have submitted
• If you have any other questions, please visit the CARS website.
• to get access to CARS, fill out the form DT1522 for access
• The list of firms trained in CARS is here.

CARS Training by the Numbers

We've wrapped up our December CARS Training (and our training for 2014). It is a good time to reflect on how many people have been trained in CARS at this time.

WisDOT - 304 people trained

• regions trained completely (SW, NW, NE, Bureaus)
• SE partially trained

Management Consultant Training - 36 people trained

• this training included some WisDOT employees

Consultants - 106 people trained


The list of firms trained in CARS is here.

The link to the CARS Videos to learn remotely is here.

You will also note that I have created a link in the upper right corner of this site that links to the "CARS Video Tutorial."

If you are a consultant who has reviewed the training remotely, I would be happy to add you to the list of firms that have been trained in CARS. Just email me, and I will add you to my list.

Training Week in Green Bay

A big training week for the CARS application. Just got done training WisDOT employees in Green Bay - the Northeast Region. 

Now that this is done, it opens up an entire region of people who now have the ability to review and approve invoices that you are sending in electronically.

Looking at how CARS is coming along, we are starting to see about 5 electronic invoices come in per day. Now that Northeast can start receiving invoices, I'm expecting to see more invoices come in.

Training for consultants is on December 16. Am thinking about possibly creating another consultant training date in January, or possibly doing a WebEx class (remote training).

Here is a list of firms that have been trained in CARS.

CARS Tutorial Videos

Below you will find some CARS videos that will assist you getting into CARS, setting up your firm, and creating invoices. This now include videos for evaluations (updated 12/21/14). These videos complement our CARS Manual.

Intro to CARS

Consultant – Adding Staff Members

Consultant – Assign Contracts and Roles

Consultant – Assign Contracts and Roles with Groups

Consultant – Main Menu and Dashboard

Consultant – Contract Navigation

Consultant - Invoicing - Actual Cost Contract

Consultant - Invoicing – Cost Per Unit Contract

Consultant - Invoicing – Lump Sum Contract

Consultant - Invoicing – Specific Rate Contract

Consultant - Invoicing - Include and Create Sub Invoices

Consultant - Invoicing - Creating an Invoice as a Subconsultant

Consultant - Invoicing - Create a $0 Subconsultant Invoice with Previous Paid Amounts ** NEW**

Consultant - Invoicing - Create $0 Prime Consultant Invoice to include Sub Invoices **NEW**

Consultant - Evaluations - Respond to WisDOT Evaluation

If you have not had CARS Training, and would be comfortable using CARS after watching these videos, please let me know and I could add you to the list of firms that have been trained in CARS.

If there are additional topics that you would like me to address in the videos, please let me know via email.

We will be training WisDOT employees in Green Bay on Dec 9 and 10.

XML

Wanted to address XML today. As far as I know, no one has gotten a clean XML export out of their financial software (Deltek Vision, Ajera, Oracle, etc) that will work directly with the CARS XML structure.

The best case scenario is that you press a button on your software, and it exports out XML in a format exactly what you need. I'm sure that world doesn't exist now, but you should be able to export it out somehow, maybe to XML, maybe to Excel.

I've figured out a quick way to record a macro in Excel to get the labor in the format we need, and then a way to export it. 

What does this mean? It means that in a backward fashion, we can basically cobble together an XML that will work. Is it perfect, is it fast? No, but it should be way faster than entering everything in manually, and it should help to make sure you aren't mis-keying your labor. 

If it takes you a half hour to enter your invoices manually, I think that creating a macro for Excel and piecing together your invoice should take less than 10 minutes, which is a win. It still isn't where we need to be, but it is an efficiency. You would still likely need to manually type in some pieces to the XML, like the work order number, basis of payment, overhead rate type, etc.

If you have a direct export out of your XML that you want us to play with, let me know.

Also, if you want a list of other firms that have a similar software, let me know. I really don't want all of you on an island when it comes to figuring out XML invoicing.

Here is a list of all firms that have been trained in CARS, have an administrator so they can use CARS, or are signed up for future training.

As always, email me with any questions. I am not taking off much time during the holidays. Most of my days out of the office will be when I'm training.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

CARS Training and Website Update

We just finished CARS Training for consultants on November 18. We trained a total of 19 consultants from 12 different companies on Tuesday. I appreciate all of you attending training and your thoughtful questions.

The updated list of firms that have been trained in CARS is here

Speaking of questions, we will be updating the CARS website with a list of Frequently Asked Questions. You can find that list on the CARS website on Friday morning (11/21).

Looking forward to our Green Bay WisDOT training sessions on December 9 and 10, we have a total of about 60 people to train. The following week on December 16 we will be training consultants. There is plenty of room for consultants to sign up for that training. You can find the training registration on the CARS website.

If you have any questions you would like addressed, feel free to leave them here, or email me

Training Week

This week was a CARS Training week, meaning there's not much work I was able to do in CARS this week. We trained WisDOT employees in LaCrosse (about 30 people trained) and in Madison (about 15 people trained).

If you need to invoice in SW region, you should now be able to do this, as we are done training in that region.

Had some small developments. I'm trying to create a report to update local programs, and to create a maintenance plan to make sure that when local program contracts come in, that we can assign them to the proper Management Consultants. Right now, if you are the prime, you should be able to see all your contracts. I'm working on a report to help give you access to those contracts you are overseeing. I hope to get that done soon.

Consultant training is on November 18. We have a total of 21 consultants who will be learning CARS on that date.

Here is the updated list of consultants that have been trained (I've also included a list of consultants who are scheduled to be trained).

weekly CARS report

The big news of the week is that XML support is now on the web. You can download the XML files pertaining to each of your basis of payment type, and use that as an example of what your XML upload files should look like. We will help the best we can with XML. Regarding subcontractors, there still isn't an ability to upload those invoices via XML. That is something we are working on.

Otherwise, we're in a data clean up phase. Something that we need to work on is the constant updating of the Local Program projects, so those who need to view those contracts can get to them the moment they are authorized.

Training in LaCrosse and Madison next week.

Here is the updated list of firms who have some CARS Training, have a Consultant Administrator, or are signed up for future CARS Training.

XML and Data Clean up

Two big things happened this week in CARS (October 27-31).

1. We got XML information into the manual. Appendix 13 should help you understand how to use XML to help make sense of what will exactly be needed for your invoices. We just got approval today to put those XMLs online. You will be able to download a sample XML to provide some type of template for you to work off. Look for that on the website either on Friday or early next week.
2. Data clean up is occurring. Many of you have noticed that the PM on many of your contracts has not been with the agency for quite a few years. We started an effort this week, with the help of the contract specialists to assist in getting all of that data cleaned up. 

I did an initial look at our CARS training sign up for LaCrosse and Madison for the middle of November. For LaCrosse, I have 32 WisDOT employees signed up for training. In Madison, I have 15 employees signed up for CARS Training. 

I ran some numbers this past week regarding our previous CARS Training. 

Through almost half of the training schedule (Aug 21 - Feb 18), we've trained a total of 290 people in CARS invoicing and evaluations.

There are 43 vendors trained, and 41 firms having vendor admins in the application. That list is here. 

end of training sessions, looking forward

When we do training, we generally do 3 days out of 5. It's a lot of time out of the office, but it is always fun to teach others about using the CARS application (and to see new faces). Our last of the 3 training days occurred on Tuesday the 21st. On Tuesday we trained 24 consultants total, so we're starting to get a lot of people trained.

A link to the latest firms that have received some training (or have a vendor admin) is here.

A few highlights from the week is the fact that we're generally seeing at least one to two invoices come in per day. I know that the deadline to use CARS is March 1st, but it is good to see some firms starting to use the invoicing part of the application.

Another exciting thing is the fact that it looks like I've been approved to finally create some videos for the CARS application. I will try to keep these short and to the point. I will make a note on the blog when they have gone live.

Also hoping to have some example XML's on the website, since many of you have been emailing us about getting some idea of what will be needed to do XML uploads - I hope this is done ASAP. Basically, the XML is the same at the top, with the basic contract information. Below that header information will be the invoice type, which will vary depending if it is actual cost, lump sum, cost per unit, or specific rate.

The next few weeks will allow us to work with the firms (and WisDOT employees) that have been trained, as well as to gear up for our next training dates which is November 12, 13, and 18.

CARS Highlights for week of October 13-17

The big news for the week is that we have started receiving our very first electronic invoices in the CARS application.  Not only did we receive an electronic invoice, we received three of them, and already approved two for payment.

This is exciting to see our work finally accomplish the things we hoped it would.

For the week, we've trained about 50 WisDOT employees in Eau Claire and Superior.

Thanks to everyone for your excellent feedback on the application during the training session

We're still trying to fix the issue that many firms are having when they select a lot of contracts.

A list of firms that have been trained in the CARS application and/or have a Vendor Admin is listed here.

The upcoming week on Tuesday, October 21, we will be training a total of 24 consultants in the CARS application.

Assigning contracts in CARS as a Vendor Admin

We found out one thing this week about CARS, it is not handling the checkbox "Select All Contracts" very well, especially if your firm has a lot of contracts. If your firm has more than 50 contracts, and you "Select All Contracts" this will give CARS an overload on the security side of things, really hampering the ability of the application to simply navigate.

We know this is an issue, and are working diligently to fix this problem. It is definitely understood that there are people within the firm that will need to see all contracts, completed and active.

For now, the fix should be to either create groups with less than 50 contracts, or to simply not click the "Select All Contracts" checkbox when adding contracts to employee at your firm.

If you cannot get into CARS because you may have overloaded the system, you can contact us, and we can manually remove those contracts from your firm. When we do this, you should be able to go back into CARS and manually add contracts, just not all of them.

For the upcoming week, we have WisDOT training in Eau Claire and Superior (October 15 and 16 respectively), followed by consultant training on October 21 in Madison. There is plenty of space available. You can register for training by going to this site.

A list of all firms with CARS training can be found here.

Week Recap - and looking forward

Just finished training of consultants on Tuesday, September 30. For now, our list of trained consultants, and firms with Vendor Administrators is here.

I feel that most consultants definitely get CARS, and are excited to use it. We do know that something people are anxious for is XML upload for invoicing.  We are working hard on to provide the schema for the XML. Look for that to come out soon.

Our next training dates are October 15 (Eau Claire) and October 16 (Superior). This is for WisDOT employees only. The current sign up has about 20 people training in Eau Claire and 10 training in Superior.

Right now, we're busily working on getting some fixes into CARS, as well as signing up firms to Vendor Admin roles.

--as a note, we restarted the CARS application late on Friday afternoon to help solve some of the slow response times many of you have been experiencing.

As always, feel free to contact us with any questions.

First Week of CARS Training for Consultants

This has been a fun first week of training. Got to train WisDOT employees on Thursday, as well as our first consultant group on Friday. It was good practice at teaching the entire manual.

For the most part, the reaction to our training has been great. If you have already trained, we appreciate your patience as we work out all the kinks. We have plenty of training sessions to go, and hope to do better each time.

Consultants, once you have been trained, please email me your CARS Access Request form so I can get you set up in CARS.

If you have not signed up for training yet, you can go to this link to sign up.

A question I've gotten from many consultants was about which firms have had the training. Since invoicing is a coordinated effort between primes and subs, firms would like to know what other firms have had the training. That list of trained firms is here.

As always, feel free to email me or leave a comment here.

CARS - where we've been and where we're going

Welcome to the CARS blog!

This will be WisDOT’s interactive blog to help keep everyone in the loop. Bookmark it now!

We'll try to address a bunch of issues with this blog post. If you have a question about CARS, please leave a comment.

As of today (Sept 22), we have had 8 training sessions in CARS. We have trained about 100 WisDOT employees on the use of CARS, as well as all of our Management Consultants.

Our training consists of hands-on training on navigation within the program, approving invoices, and creating evaluations. Many of the people in training have never used CARS. After some initial comments on the training, I am trying to make sure our training is slow enough to make sure everyone can follow along.

The training sessions are very helpful for us to help understand the particular enhancements that WisDOT employees and consultants think would benefit the CARS application.

This upcoming week, we have WisDOT Training on Sept 25, followed by our first consultant training on Sept 26 and Sept 30. In all, we have 81 people to train in the next 8 days in CARS.

One question that many of you have had is, "when is the time to use CARS?" The time to use CARS is whenever the WisDOT project manager and the consultant have had training in the system. All invoices and evaluations will need to be processed in CARS by March 1, 2015 to have all evaluations and invoicing done in CARS.

Here is a list of firms that have had training, or will in this upcoming week:

• all Management Consultant firms (training occurred on Aug 26)
• AECOM
• KL Engineering
• Ayres
• Kjohnson
• Baxter and Woodman
• Walling Consulting
• Kapur & Associates
• Fish & Associates
• HNTB
• Mead & Hunt
• Cedar Corporation
• TerraVenture Advisors
• Becher Hoppe
• CORRE
• MSA Professional Services
• JT Engineering
• Knight E/A
• EMCS
• Strand
• Soils and Engineering Services
• Coleman Engineering
• Single Source
• DAAR Engineering
• Westbrook Associated Engineers
• Strand Associates

We will be holding training in the CARS Application from now until February 18, 2015. The list of training dates can be found here.

For more information on CARS, remember to regularly view the CARS site on the Internet

If you any questions or comments, please email me, Dan Meinen (dan.meinen@dot.wi.gov) or my supervisor Sharon Bremser (sharon.bremser@dot.wi.gov).